We have all heard that saying. We have all used it. But going through the remnants of someone else's life puts it in an all new perspective and forces us to confront the reality of it.
My mother in law passed away on December 24th. What a difference a month makes. Thanksgiving dinner was a "regular" holiday with a big family dinner and laughter and hugs and the excitement and joy of the holiday season that was just beginning. A little over a week later, my mother in law fell and had a heart attack. Or had a heart attack and fell, they were never sure which came first. It was painfully obvious at that point to everyone, even her, that she could no longer safely live alone. A week after her heart attack and fall, she was moved out of the hospital and into a rehabilitation center to start working on getting her strength back. Rich and I found a place that we thought would be great for her once she was ready. A retirement home that specialized in Alzheimer's patients, a disease that she had been struggling with for a the last couple of years. Then came the flu and pneumonia. She began deteriorating at a rapid rate. The Call came early Christmas Eve morning from the nurse practitioner. Time for the family to gather at her side.
My husband is an only child and my mother in law's siblings do not live very close by. There were only 4 of us there, Rich and I, one of her sisters and a dear family friend. We did not sit there for long. She passed away at 2:40 in the afternoon. Watching someone take their last breath is a very heart wrenching thing. Death does not come easily and neatly like it does in the movies. It approaches slowly and stealthily and relentlessly. And the human body which is designed to survive does not go without a fight. Even a weakened body like my mother in law's still clings to life for all it is worth. A tug of war between Life and Death with the human body as the battlefield. No, not easy at all. We held her hands and talked to her and tried to comfort her and each other as we watched the battle drag on. When it was over, we called the nurse in. After confirming that she had indeed passed, the nurse reached over and slid the window open just a bit. That seemed like a fairly odd thing to do considering it was a very cold and windy day outside. As the blast of cold air blew the curtain back and made us all shiver, we looked at each other in puzzlement then back at the nurse. She smiled and looked a little embarrassed. "It's something I learned in nursing school. When someone passes away, you open the window so that their spirit can fly away." I didn't know they taught that in nursing school. But I found that thought beautiful.
Christmas Day and even New Year's were lost in the ensuing mind numbing blur of endless funeral details and preparations. Then we were faced with an even more formidable task. Her house. Her things. Her memories. Her beloved possessions. Her clothes. Her everything. It is sad and extremely difficult to be left to dispose of the things that someone else dearly cherished. How would I feel about someone coming into my home and disposing of the things that I cherish the most? Taking my beloved books and yarn off to charity or worse, the trash dump. All of my memories just junk to someone else. It tore at my heart.
No matter how hard it was for me, it was absolutely NOTHING next to the torment Rich must have been feeling. At first he could not even spend more than a few minutes in her house before he had to leave. We started clearing out the "easy" stuff first. The clothes. Those we figured we could donate to Goodwill and someone would be able to use them. Somebody could use them! That was it! Inadvertently, we had hit upon the idea that saved us from the worst of the grief as we went through her things. Instead of just blindly disposing of everything, first try to find someone who needs it! We gave her dishes and silverware to a coworker that had lost everything in a fire. Her pool table to friends with sons who would play with it and enjoy it as Rich had when he was a boy. We began gathering up the items that she loved the most, her angel collection, her puzzles that she so lovingly spent hours putting together and taking apart over and over again, her collection of holiday decorations, etc. We began matching up people who shared her love for these particular items, people we knew would feel the same joy from these things and cherish them as much as she did. I can't help but feel as if she approves. It really helped us to think of it that way. It helps us still, as we are still a ways from being finished.
As we were sorting through the items in her house, I was surprised at how many things we found that she had been saving for "later." Items saved for "good," or for "someday." How sad. She had obviously bought and collected these items because she liked them, and in the end she never got to use them because that "Someday" had never come. It had lost the race to Death. We have begun the process of bringing some of her furnishings and items to assimilate into our own home, and as we do, we are now faced with the prospect of weeding through our own things to make room. Forced to face the march of time in our own lives. As I have been doing this, it has come as a terrible shock to me to find those things in my own life that I had been tucking away for "Someday."
Time seems to creep by, but that is an illusion. In reality it is flying. This point was cruelly driven home by yet another life altering event that occurred during December. My oldest nephew had been diagnosed this past spring with diabetes which he was unaware he had until an infection developed in his foot that led to the eventual amputation of his right big toe. He had healed and gone back to work and conquered his diabetes with diet and exercise and weight loss. All of his "numbers" were back in the normal zone. He was feeling good and getting back to his normal life with his wife and young daughter. Until December. Until he discovered another "spot" on the bottom of his right foot. After many agonizing weeks of tests and waiting for results and more tests followed by more waiting, the diagnosis was in. He would have to have his right leg amputated just below the knee. Surgery was scheduled for mid January. He found this out on the Thursday before Christmas. How could this be? He had done everything right! He had followed doctors orders and diets exactly, lost over 50 pounds, brought his numbers back to normal! Yes, the doctors agreed. But the damage had already been done. It had been done in the years before he even knew he had diabetes. Like time, it had been marching steadily on as he lived his life unaware of its advancing.
He called me after he left the doctor's office that day. Bill has always been more like a little brother to me. Only 10 years of age separates us. My mom babysat him the whole time he was little and we were always playing together. I took him everywhere I went. We were inseparable. After we hung up, I cried like a baby. The sudden reality of all those years gone by hit me. We were no longer kids laughing and playing and having the time of our lives with not a care in the world. We were in our 30's and 40's and both being forced to face some hard realities in both of our lives. One again I was forced to ask myself where had all those years gone?
December came and went last year as it does every year. But this time the elderly white haired man that came to visit our family was not the jolly old Santa Claus, but the somber and wizened elder Father Time. In his sack he did not carry toys and Christmas cheer and joy, but hard life lessons. I have tried to pay attention to those lessons, as difficult as they have been. So I have dug through my yarn stash for that expensive, heavenly merino yarn, those silk and sequins yarns and all of those other gorgeous yarns that I had been "saving" for "someday." And I have started to knit them.
Don't put off joy for tomorrow when you use it today. Yesterday is gone, tomorrow is not promised and today is all we've got. Because "Someday" is an illusion. It doesn't really exist.
